MEF Research and Writing

USexit: The Case for Booting the UN out of America Grows Stronger

The UN's diplomatic knifing of Israel may set the stage for a renewed campaign for American withdrawal from the body.

In his lame-duck attempt to undermine the State of Israel with a diplomatic knifing in the front, President Obama has created fertile ground for a campaign to lead the United States out of the United Nations. Or as I call it: USexit.

A Usexit (pronounced: you-sex-it) movement has rarely ever taken hold, with the last attempt to encourage such a move dying in committee in 2015.

The President shall terminate all membership by the United States in the United Nations, and in any organ, specialized agency, commission, or other formally affiliated body of the United Nations.

It added:

The United States Mission to the United Nations is closed. Any remaining functions of such office shall not be carried out.

Commenting at the time, Rep. Mike Rogers said: "Why should the American taxpayer bankroll an international organization that works against America's interests around the world?" The time is now to restore and protect American sovereignty and get out of the United Nations."

"I dislike paying for something that two-bit Third World countries with no freedom attack us and complain about the United States," his Senate colleague, Rand Paul (R-KY), previously remarked. "There's a lot of reasons why I don't like the UN, and I think I'd be happy to dissolve it."

In brief, the actions of the U.S. government over the past week prove that President Obama, the U.S. administration, and the wider left-wing establishment cabal have learned nothing from 2016. They still believe that they — not "We The People" — control the political priorities of the nation.

Expect an invigorated USexit movement in the next few months.

And they fail to realise how putting a spotlight on an already morally questionable institution like the United Nations — replete with its Human Rights Council with the likes of Saudi Arabia chairing it — brings the UN itself, not Israel's settlement-building policies, into question.

So expect a resurgence of the American Sovereignty Act and an invigorated USexit movement in the next few months.

There are, of course, a few reasons for the U.S. to maintain the United Nations on its home turf — not least the fact that the New York-based organisation allows the U.S. to spy on almost every country in the world from the comfort of Manhattan.

But the Obama administration has now accidentally heaped pressure on this relationship, and the intelligence community has, as yet, not uttered a peep about it. Too busy working on undermining the next president of the United States with the whole Russia saga, perhaps.

Nevertheless, I fully imagine a USexit campaign could take root in 2017. And a chance for Donald Trump to drain the international swamp, too.

Raheem Kassam is a Shillman-Ginsburg fellow at the Middle East Forum and editor-in-chief of Breitbart London.